Saturday, May 13, 2017

Sell From Your High Side

In her workshop "Building Your
Business Using the Enneagram," Valerie Atkin of
Wells Street
Consulting pointed out that selling has gotten a bad rap, as
reflected in such clichés as "being sold down the river" or "selling
out." Actually, effective selling is improving things, helping
people, accomplishing goals, creatively addressing what's missing,
sharing and synthesizing knowledge, anticipating what might go
wrong, inspiring clients to satisfy their vision, helping them stay
on course, and collaborating to meet their needs.

In case you didn't
detect an Enneagram thread in the above, re-read the "Actusally, effective selling" sentence and
you'll see how Val encourages all personality styles to acknowledge
and use their strengths when marketing their services. And, given
her many years of experience with companies of all sizes as a
consultant, trainer, and coach, Val—an Enneagram style Three—knows her
territory.

In one of Val's IEA conference
workshops, I discovered another stroke of marketing luck for me as style Nine and for other
introverted personalities, the subtle strength of passive
marketing: writing articles or books that attract clients and,
especially, a web site that sells itself. I say it was a stroke of
luck because when I started my web site in 1998, I thought of it
only as educational, showing others how to use the Enneagram in
business, and as a venue for me to write online articles and case
studies. But some of what I wrote there ended up in my coaching book and, as
I gradually moved into phone coaching, the site began to attract
clients.

A few years ago I hired someone with expertise in coaching,
Internet technology, and marketing to help me fine-tune my web offering. He helped me see myself, what
distinguishes me from other coaches, and how to make the most of my
strengths. He had published three highly successful
books focused on pure technology for techies, and took the same “keep
it simple" approach to show small business owners how to leverage today's
Internet to better market and sell themselves.

As an Enneagram style Six, he was the ultimate partner. I felt absolutely safe
in his hands because even though I’m confident he knows a hundred times more
than I’ll ever know in his areas of expertise, he gave me practical
information I could act on without feeling bogged down in technical details.
Among the many ways his coaching helped me refresh my site, I learned how to
search competitor's pages for their "metatags;" where to get free or
low-cost, high quality photos and graphics; how to use key words; and how to upgrade with my server so I have instant site statistics at
my fingertips. I was able to keep track of number of daily visitors, how long they typical
stayed, and on what pages, so I could make sure those pages attracted
browsers to explore in more depth.

The home page message to potential clients, I
learned, needs to be short, clear, and simple: “What is it, why do I want
it, and where do I get it?” Like many of you, it wasn’t easy for me to state
concisely what I do and how that’s different from other coaches (part of the
“why do I want it?” message). He provided the mirror. And he knew how to gently guide me when I
was leaping off in the wrong direction.

Many people still use their sites as “place holders,”
glorified business cards where people can look them up and get contact
information. Or their home page consists of a treatise about everything
they've ever known, with no quick highlights or easy-to-scan information.
Research on eye movement when reading web pages shows consistently that
people don't read text thoroughly and they scan for subheadings that stand
out. So if browsers don't know you already, you have only seconds to get
their attention.